About Katie & Her Work
Katie’s life path has been fueled by her passion to understand food systems, her skills for sharing what she knows, and her commitment to social justice. She has spent over 15 years learning about food systems by working in institutional kitchens, restaurants, produce departments, on organic vegetable farms and coordinating community gardens. In her over ten years of experience working for non-profits, she has coordinated and/or taught countless classes on cooking and gardening.
Her passion for youth development began in 2001 while guiding groups of youth on canoe trips in the Boundary Waters. Her favorite groups to guide were from communities that have historically been denied access to wilderness experiences. Witnessing the life-changing impact of a wilderness experience on these youth sparked a passion in Katie for providing more inclusive opportunities for youth to connect with the natural world through food, gardening, and being outdoors. In 2010 she returned to school to study history and earn a secondary ed. teaching license in social studies. Katie was particularly focused on understanding the historical context around social injustices experienced by marginalized community members and how to provide equitable education experiences for all students. Her degree enabled her to experience working in the more formalized educational setting of a school.
In 2017 she was hired as the Children’s Program Coordinator at the American Indian Community Housing Organization where she worked with children and families in AICHO’s permanent supportive housing program. In this role she was able to combine her passion for education and youth development with her interest and knowledge of food systems to help develop youth programming that provided greater access to healthy choices and cultural experiences. The program utilized gardening, cooking, and a seasonal cycle of cultural food practices to restore connections to culture as a path to health and healing. At AICHO she also got to be a part of the food sovereignty team which worked to develop economic opportunity for Indigenous food producers and harvesters, and education to the broader community about Indigenous foods and food practices as a part of revitalizing the Indigenous food economy. Experiences learning about our plant and animal relatives and food practices from cultural knowledge holders in the Indigenous community have been immensely enriching and influential in Katie’s life and work.
Katie has Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and a self-designed major called Learning A Sense of Place, from St. Olaf College. She also earned her Graduate Teaching Licensure from the College of St. Scholastica in secondary ed. social studies in 2012.
